San Jacinto

For ART 173 we had to choose a country and redesign their currency. I chose Mexico. Seen above and below are PhotoShop concept boards for the re-design. Most are serious contenders that would make interesting money. The Pinata, Agave, Mayan Calendar and Futbol are naturals. I also admire the work of the Mexican muralists.

Pancho Villa has always fascinated me because my dad (born in 1900) was actually there in the 1920’s. He told me a story about the time he rode on top of a train carrying government soldiers. The soldiers were given first cabin, while the women, children and “stranjeros” were allowed to ride on the roofs of the train cars. Pancho Villa’s men had decided to dynamite a bridge that the train had to traverse. The charges went off a tad late, catching only the end of the convoy. My Dad watched in horror as the last three cars went down to oblivion with all on board. He was on top of the LAST car that successfully negotiated the bridge.

The last (Mexican Drug Wars) board was done as a “wakeup” statement. Terrible things are taking place in Mexico in the name of drugs and money. Here are some statistics taken from one of the web sites that supplied these gruesome images.

On Wednesday, January 11, 2012 Felipe Calderón’s government released the updated death tolls from Mexico’s ongoing drug war. The Mexican “government” reported that 47,515 people have been killed in drug-related violence between late 2006 and September 2011, with 12,903 killings having occurred in the first 9 nine months of 2011 – an 11% increase over the same 9 month period in 2010.

Those 12,903 killings equate to approximately one drug killing every 30 minutes of every day for the first 9 months of last year. Most of Mexico’s drug war killings haven place in just eight of Mexico’s 31 states, five of those ones that share a border with the United States. Yet, as long as those deaths are Mexicans and the happen south of the border, Americans won’t care and America will fear to do anything about the chaos and hell raging across the state to our south.

Nothing to see here. Move along! We wouldn’t want to upset anyone or force them from their comfort zone.

Of course, I would never produce a design along those lines, I just wanted to educate the class about the atrocities now occurring on a daily basis. My choices have been narrowed by committee to the Agave, Muralists and Mayan Calendar. After I design 12 thumbnails for each topic, the winner will be designed in Adobe Illustrator. Stay tuned…